The purpose of this web site is to present an unbiased evaluation of the results of various medical studies which are published almost every day and compare these with relavent paper from the past few years. Often the results of these studies are incorrect, misinterpreted or exaggerated by medical scientist and by the news media. Hopefully, the information in this web site will help to clarify such problems and take the fear out of the many scary medical conclusions.

Monday, May 2, 2011

DON’T BE AFRAID TO TAKE YOUR CALCIUM TABLET

At the beginning of every change of the season some scientists publish a few papers in which they try to scare the pants off people. This time its “your calcium tablets may cause heart problems”.

I hate to say it again but it must be said: If the people who publish newspapers and magazines would read the actual reports in the medical journals they would not publish such hogwash.

This Spring’s publication is one that combines a number of studies which show no significant increase risk of heart attack or stroke. This is called “meta-analysis” which is another word for lumping a bunch of studies, some of which are poor, and seeing if anything comes out of it.

What happens when you do this is the number of people in the “meta-analysis” becomes large and this increases the likelihood that the average for all will become statistically significant. In this case the relative risk was barely significant (RR= 1.15 Confidence Interval; 1.03-1.27). Remember if the lower CI number is 1.0 the RR is not significant. So in this case, the RR is of marginal significance and would be considered by most to be of no consequence.

Remember if the relative risk is small the real or absolute risk (the only one that matters) is going to be exceedingly small.

This is very bad science and should not be published in any scientific journal. However, when it does get published the authors call the news media and indicate that the risk of heart and stroke problems “may be increased” by calcium tablets. Then the news media print headlines like “Calcium Tablets increase Risk of Heart Disease”.

Blog Archive

About Me

I am retired professor who has painted off and on for much of my life. Until I retired I never had enough time to devote to art. However, since then I have figured out how to make famous paintings into dioramas. To my knowledge this has not been done before and I hope you like them.
I have another blog which reflects my interest in sex hormone research and other topics of interest in the clinical and epidemiological fields.
http://medicalmisssteps.blogspot.com